A selection of recent art and photography books on Asia

Perhaps the most comprehensive photography book of the year, and the heftiest, with over 600 photographs, including 150 color plates, is Benares Seen from Within (University of Washington Press, $100). British photojournalist Richard Lannoy began working in India in the 1950s, and has lived in Benares for two extended periods of time since then. In his introduction, Lannoy writes: "I want to present the viewer-reader with the same kind of revelation as Benares has granted me-in all its complexity-without the falsification of reality by bogus spirituality or by sentimentalism, whether cynical or humanist, to which photographic books are prone." In this he has succeeded. The photographs are divided into fourteen sections, such as "Pilgrims and Bathers," Yoga Gymnastics Ascetics," "Countryfolk," and "Crafts." A list of photographs appears at the beginning of each section, so that there is no need for distracting text on the pages on which the images appear. Lannoy is a gifted writer, and his essays on the historical background of the sacred city are a welcome complement to the photographs.
China: Fifty Years Inside the People's Republic (Aperture, $50) was published to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949. Despite the title, the emphasis is on the past twenty years, although a few earlier photographs are included at the beginning of the book-of Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai at Yanan in 1937 by Owen Lattimore, of the war years by Robert Capa, of Shanghai and Beijing in 1949, of steel furnaces and propaganda posters from the 1960s. Works by twenty contemporary photographers, from both China and the West, cover a broad range of subjects, from Hong Kong-born Liu Heung Shing's black-and-white images of Beijing in the early 1980s, before the current economic frenzy had begun, to American David Butow's photographs of Xinjiang in 1998. A traveling exhibition of the works included in the book, which opened at the Asia Society in New York in the fall of 1999, will be on view in Minneapolis this winter, and then go on to Coral Gables in 2002 and the Sackler Gallery in Washington, D.C., in 2004.
China: The Photographs of Lois Conner (Callaway, $100) is a collection of eighty-four photographs by one of the artists represented in China: Fifty Years Inside the People's Republic. Conner, an American who teaches photography at Yale University, for the past sixteen years has traveled throughout China photographing with a banquet camera which produces negatives that are seven inches by seventeen inches. Her panoramic horizontal and plunging vertical images, all in black-and-white-of timeless landscapes, as well as architecture, old and new-bring to mind traditional Chinese landscape painting. Particularly memorable are her images of waterlilies. The book includes a forward by Jonathan Spence and an essay by Geremie R. Barm¨¦.
As Urs Morf writes in his brief forward to Shanghai (Edition Stemmle, $67.50), "Whether or not they have been here before, visitors to Shanghai these days are always full of wonder." The sources of this wonder-the futuristic high-rise buildings, both in Pudong and the rest of the city, and the new bridges and elevated highway system-are captured in black-and-white by three Swiss photographers, Ferit Kuyas, Edy Brunner, and Marco Paoluzzo. The emphasis is on the changing skyline of the city, the displacing of the old with the new, as well as how the city's residents relate to their environment. Nearly all the photographs date from 1998.

One might well ask whether another book of photographs of Tibet is necessary. Upon seeing Tibet: The Roof of the World between Past and Present (Shambhala, $45), one quickly comes to the conclusion that there is room for yet one more, at least for this particular book. Although the text, by Maria Antonia Sironi Diemberger, is somewhat awkward (especially disconcerting are the unattributed italicized quotations interspersed throughout), the numerous illustrations are a feast for the eye. In addition to contemporary photographs, many taken by Marcello Bertinetti and Tiziana and Gianni Baldizzone, there are a number of remarkable historical images: of the British entering Gyantse in 1904, of the 13th Dalai Lama in 1910, of the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama with Mao Zedong in Beijing in 1954, of the Ganden monastery "at the height of its splendor in 1949" and in ruins "after it was sacked during the Cultural Revolution." Anyone with an interest in the Tibet of today, and in the area's history, will find this a fascinating resource.

Two books that belong on the reference shelf of anyone with more than a passing interest in Asian art are The Arts of China, Fourth Edition, Expanded and Revised by Michael Sullivan (University of California Press, $34.95, paperback) and Korea: Art and Archaeology by Jane Portal (Thames & Hudson, $27.50, paperback). Both are broad in span, covering from the Neolithic period to the present.
The first edition of Sullivan's work appeared in 1967, and the highly readable book has been a standard reference work and classroom text ever since. In this new edition, the switch from the Wade-Giles system of romanization to the now more widely used pinyin has finally been made. The early chapters of the book have been updated to incorporate many of the archaeological discoveries recently made in China. And the final chapter, "The Twentieth Century," with its brief surveys of architecture, painting, sculpture, and the decorative arts and ceramics, brings the reader up to the 1990s, with images of the Beijing Library (1987) and the Xiongguo Office Building in Taipei (1990) and paintings by such contemporary artists as Wang Guangyi and Xu Bing.
Until now, there has been no standard reference work on Korean art. Perhaps Korea: Art and Archaeology by Jane Portal, an Assistant Keeper in the Department of Oriental Antiquities in the British Museum, will become for students of Korean art what Michael Sullivan's The Arts of China has been for students of Chinese art, the definitive basic introductory text. Portal's book is divided into chapters on the each of the major periods of Korean history, and each chapter is clearly divided into subsections on topics such as architecture, painting, ceramics, sculpture, and metalware. Large, well-placed color plates enhance the text. The introductory chapter, "Korea: Land and People," contains not only background material on Korea but also information about Western knowledge of Korea. A separate chapter is devoted to "Folk Art of the Late Choson." One of the last images in the book, an installation by Nam-June Paik at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul in 1988, will look familiar to those who saw the recent exhibition of his work at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

In honor of the ninetieth anniversary of the National Library of China (formerly known as the Beijing Library), the institution sent a selection of its rare books and special collections to what some might have considered an unlikely venue, the Queens Borough Public Library in New York. Those who did not make the trip to Queens when the exhibition was on view (from December 1999 to March 2000) now have a chance to see what they missed. Visible Traces: Rare Books and Special Collections from the National Library of China, compiled and edited by Philip K. Hu (Morning Glory Publishers, Beijing, distributed by Art Media Resources, $65, paperback) is the catalogue issued in conjunction with the exhibition. Written in English and Chinese, it is divided into four sections: "Rare Books and Manuscripts," "Epigraphical and Pictorial Rubbings," "Maps and Atlases," and "Texts and Illustrations from China's Ethnic Minorities." It contains color illustrations of each of the sixty-eight items on view, and in many cases, there is more than one illustration of a particular item. For instance, the album entitled Gengzhi tu (Illustrations of Riziculture and Sericulture) dating from the Kangxi period of the Qing dynasty, with poetic inscriptions by the Kangxi emperor himself, is represented by no less than six illustrations: two large two-page spreads from the album of forty-six leaves, and four smaller images of single pages. There is an informative essay on each item, and at the back of the book, a detailed list of "sources, references, and related readings" for each item, as well as an extensive bibliography.

Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama lived in New York from 1958 to 1973 and was very much a part of the 1960s art scene there, as is evident in the work included in Yayoi Kusama (Phaidon, $29.95, paperback). In her paintings and installations, she explores sexuality, self-image, and obsessively repetitive patterns. The book contains an interview with the artist by the Japanese poet and art critic Akira Tatehata, a survey of her work by Museum of Modern Art curator Laura Hoptman, and an essay on her seminal installation work, Driving Image, by German-born art historian Udo Kutermann. Yayoi Kusama is also a novelist, underground filmmaker, and fashion designer, and a selection of her writing is included.
The man who introduced him to Japanese bamboo baskets once told Robert T. Coffland "that he was continually amazed by what a human being could do with a stick of bamboo." After only a casual glance at Coffland's book Contemporary Japanese Bamboo Arts (Art Media Resources, $50 hardcover, $35 paperback), one quickly comes to agree with that statement. Twenty contemporary masters of this dying art form are represented in the book, and two of them, Iizuka Shokansai and Maeda Chikubosai, are Living National Treasures of Japan. Both contemporary and traditional styles are included. Although this is not a photography book, per se, one cannot help but admire the stunning color images of bamboo masterpieces by Pat Pollard, and the black-and-white portraits of their makers by Art Streiber.
Ainu: Spirit of a Northern People, edited by William W. Fitzhugh and Chisato O. Dubreuil (University of Washington Press, $75), was published in conjunction with an exhibition mounted by the Arctic Studies Center of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. A comprehensive compendium of the history, culture, and art of the people who inhabit the northernmost regions of Japan, it contains essays by leading American, European, and Japanese scholars, as well as by native Ainu artists and cultural leaders, who, like native peoples elsewhere, are struggling to keep their culture and traditions alive. The text is richly illustrated with historical and modern photographs, representations of the Ainu in Japanese art, and artifacts, from prehistoric ceramic figurines to contemporary sculpture and textile arts. Attitudes of Japanese and Westerners toward the Ainu, and the collections of Ainu artifacts in museums throughout the world are covered.

-Caroline Herrick